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Saturday, January 2, 2016

So far we have referred to our book in progress as 'the book for the 250th Anniversary of Bedford County' or something similar. As we are three years into the project, with only five years left until the actual anniversary date, I thought that it is about time that we start thinking about a proper title for the book. I sent an email out to all book committee members with a suggestion that I would like them to consider:

BEDFORD COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA ~ TWO AND ONE-HALF CENTURIES IN THE MAKING

In explanation:

1.) In order to not have to continually state ‘250’ or ‘250
years’, I thought that ‘Two And One-Half Centuries’ would present a nice
alternative.

2.) Essentially the title is ‘Bedford County, Pennsylvania’
which satisfies the need for a basic title.

3.) The subtitle of ‘Two And One-Half Centuries In The Making’ not only
covers the 250 years of past (to the present) history – but it implies
continuation into the future. The phrase ‘in the making’ can be defined as a
process of continuing change – of the thing constantly being made.

So this title defines Bedford County, Pennsylvania as an
entity that has grown for 2-1/2 centuries (250 years) and is, even now,
continuing to be made, implying that the entity will continue on into the future
(never actually reaching finality – ‘made’).

The majority of responses have so far been favorable to using this title. Only two members have submitted alternative titles for consideration; they will be distributed for the entire committee to review and consider in the future.

Below is another example of an excerpt of our book in progress. It comes from the chapter: Industrious Bedford County and the section titled: Inns And Taverns Encourage The Growth Of Towns. Again, notice that the text is fully footnoted where necessary.

Excerpt. . .

“Early
Americans consumed spirits at a prodigious rate.”1 That is how
one statistician described the consumption of alcoholic liquids in America
prior to the American Revolutionary War. That same statistician estimated that
every white male over the age of fifteen would have consumed an average of
forty gallons of cider, wine or distilled spirits each year. That was estimated
at roughly three pints of rum each week, or an average of seven one-ounce shots
each day. But before one jumps to the conclusion that the people of the 1700s
were all drunken sots, it must be remembered that refrigeration, and the ability
to keep liquids fresh, was not something that the people of the 1700s
possessed. Glass bottles were expensive and not expendable like they are today.
They were primarily used at taverns to transport the liquids from storage to
the table. Liquids were stored for long periods of time in wooden casks. And
those liquids that were available fresh and unfermented had a tendency to
become fermented, if stored for very long in the wooden casks of the time.The variety of liquids that we drink
today were not all available to the people of the 1700s. Water, a very common
liquid that we take for granted today, would have been obtained from either
streams or hand dug wells, both of which would not have been totally free of
disease-causing micro-organisms. Those micro-organisms were the source of
diseases such as diarrhea and ‘the flux,’ or dysentery. At the present time,
we, who live in industrialized societies, wonder that such diseases are still
common in third-world countries, but they can often be traced to impure water
supplies. Pennsylvania in the 1700s was not so different than the third-world
countries of today in regard to the cleanliness of water. In fact, one food
historian stated that the colonists in North America would have had a “built-in
resistance to water” because of centuries of learning that many diseases were
brought on by drinking water that was less than clean.2 Milk,
another common liquid in our diet at the present time, was primarily used for
making butter and cheese. The milk that was drank would not have been
pasteurized, a technique to sterilize the milk using heat, therefore diseases
borne in unclean water were also found in unclean milk. Pasteurization was not
used to ‘clean’ raw milk until Louis Pasteur developed the process in the
mid-1800s. Carbonated ‘soft’ drinks and powdered fruit flavored drinks were not
available until the 1900s.The primary liquids that were
swallowed as refreshment or nourishment by the people of the 1700s were cider,
alcoholic liquors, tea, coffee and cocoa. Of these drinks, tea, coffee and
cocoa might have been the least common. They required a lot of preparation each
time that they were to be drank since tea was only available in dry, loose form
and coffee was not very palatable when simply boiled in water; it needed to be
percolated to be properly enjoyed. Despite having originated in the western
hemisphere, cocoa was not drank in the English colonies of North America until
about the 1760s.3 Cocoa, which had been drunk ceremonially, as a
sort of sacred homage to their gods by the Olmec civilization as long ago as
three thousand years, and later by the Maya, Toltec and Aztec priesthood, had
been introduced into Europe by the Spanish invaders in the 16th Century. The
bitter drink that the Spanish conquistadors carried to their kings and queens
became refined and, as chocolate, spread throughout Europe for a century and a
half before being carried to North America. The first cocoa / chocolate
manufacturing company was established in Massachusetts in 1765. It simply wasn’t
drank widespread. Also neither tea, coffee or cocoa kept well in bottles or
wooden kegs because they didn’t ferment like other liquids.Cider, pressed from apples, and its
sister drink, peary, made from pears, were very popular in early Pennsylvania.
According to a food historian, as apple orchards sprang up through New England
and southward into Pennsylvania: “cider
intake of the colonists rapidly reached gargantuan proportions”4
Cider was widely available for consumption in autumn, and during that season
would have been very fresh and sweet tasting. As time passed, though, the
cider, which was commonly stored in wooden barrels, fermented into hard cider. Hard cider, the alcoholic
content of which could vary between 3 and 12 percent, was a common beverage for
the whole family. In fact, practically all of the alcoholic drinks downed in
the 1700s were drank by both men, women and children.5 Cider
provided a number of vitamins that people otherwise would not have gotten in
their usual diet. The Germans generally ate a breakfast which included cider or
beer thickened with flour to make a sort of pancake.6 Apples were
also used to make apple brandy and a liquor called applejack. Cider, but sometimes ale, was the basis of a kind of
punch drank during the Christmas holiday called wassail. The name derives from the Middle English Waes Haeil, that translates as ‘good
health’ or ‘health to you.’ Wassail was basically a hot mulled (i.e. heated) punch with the addition of
sugar and spices including cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.

I just want to note, to my readers outside of the U.S.A. ~ The banner regarding cookies that appears at the top of the page (and which can be hidden by simply clicking on "Got It") was placed there by Google. The banner stating: "This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services, to personalize ads and to analyze traffic. Information about your use of this site is shared with Google. By using this site, you agree to its use of cookies." was required by laws issued by the European Union requiring websites to identify any cookies used by a website. My blog does not use any cookies of any kind in and of itself. ~ Larry D. Smith

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

For an example of the progress on the book, an excerpt is presented in this post. It comes from the chapter: How Bedford County Came To Be and the section titled: Bedford County: The Beginning Of The Historic Period. Notice that the text is fully footnoted where necessary. Also, the maps provided to augment the text have been created by Larry D. Smith specifically for this book.

Excerpt. . .

As already noted, a crucial goal of
William Penn, in regard to governing his colony, was to encourage peaceful
accord with the Amerindians who inhabited the land. To that end, he insisted that
treaties be ratified with the tribes who actually occupied the lands he wished
to purchase. Although not authenticated by written record, the acquisition of
land from the Amerindians by Penn as soon as he landed (as represented in Benjamin
West’s famous painting, Penn’s Treaty
With The Indians) is believed to have, in reality, occurred.37

Treaties for the transfer of lands
from the Amerindians to the Euro~Americans were negotiated in the years 1682,
1683, 1684, 1718, 1732, 1736, 1737, 1749, 1754, 1768 and 1784.38
Such negotiations were conducted by members of the Pennsylvania Provincial
Council with the assistance of Indian
traders who could speak the Algonquian and Iroquoian languages.

The fallacy of the treaties was that
the Amerindians held the belief that no individual could personally ‘own’ any
portion of the land; it was there for everyone to use (for hunting, fishing,
travel and so forth).39 They did not fully comprehend the Euro~American
concept that ownership implied being able to prohibit others from using the
land. The Amerindians assumed that despite the formality of signing the
treaties, the use of the land would still be available to them. They were understandably
upset when the Euro~Americans began to build permanent farmsteads (often
enclosed by fencing) upon those lands acquired by treaty.

Each successive treaty ‘legitimized’
the Euro~Americans’ claim to more land west and northward from the Delaware
River.40

As noted above, the treaty of 1682
was negotiated for a thin strip of land parallel to the Delaware.

In 1683, two treaties purchased the
land between the Neshaminy and Pennypack Creeks and between the Chester and Schuylkill
Rivers.

During the following year, 1684, a
treaty brought lands encompassed by the present-day counties of Bucks, Lehigh,
Berks and Montgomery into the province.

In 1718, a treaty purchased the
lands which make up York and Lancaster Counties today. This tract encompassed
valuable farming lands on either side of the Susquehannah River, which would be
put to good use by German farmers emigrating from the Rhineland region of
Germany and Switzerland.

The treaties of 1732, 1736 and 1737
acquired lands as far north and westward as the Blue Mountain range. The
acquisitions, along with those from the prior treaties, brought into the
control of the Euro~Americans the entire land area known today as the
Pennsylvania Piedmont. The tract acquired in 1737 was known as the Walking Purchase; it has the dubious
distinction of being one of the first instances of subterfuge being used to con
the Amerindians out of more land than originally agreed upon.41

On the 10th of May 1729, the county
of Lancaster was the fourth county to be erected in the province. It was
created primarily out of the lands acquired in the treaty of 1718, and extended
the western frontier of the province to the east side of the Susquehanna River.

Euro~American settlers were steadily
moving into the lands farther west ~ to those drained by the Juniata River.
Homesteads were springing up in the Big and Little Conolloways, the Great and
Little Coves, and through the Tuscarora Valley. The Euro~American families who
were encroaching on those lands, as yet unpurchased from the Amerindians, were
primarily Ulster-Scots (i.e.
immigrants from the Ulster Plantation in northern Ireland, and variously called
Scots-Irish).42 Whether inability or unwillingness to pay for the
land, or impatience with the land office, was their motivating force, the
settlers chose to ignore the laws of the province. Anger and revenge were,
understandably, the response of the Amerindians to the intrusion.43The provincial authorities believed that if
they made an example of some of the intruding settlers, it would appease the Amerindians.
So to that end, they ordered the inhabitants of one such village, that had
grown to eleven families by 1750, to vacate their homes and move back east. All
of the buildings in that village (located west of the Susquehanna in the region
that would eventually become Bedford County, and later Fulton County), were
burned to the ground, giving the name Burnt
Cabins to the vicinity. Similar burnings were conducted at Path Valley,
Sherman’s Creek, Aughwick and the Big Cove.44

Lands defined by, and to the southeast
of the North Branch of the Susquehanna River were acquired in 1749. On July 1st
of that year sachems from the Seneca, Onontago, Tutato, Nantycoke and Conoy
tribes met with James Hamilton, then Lieutenant Governor, along with others at
Philadelphia.

The Amerindians brought complaints
that the Euro~Americans were settling on lands not yet purchased. They noted: “As our Boundaries are so well known, &
so remarkably distinguish’d by a range of high Mountains, we could not suppose
this could be done by mistake…”By
the 16th of August, an agreement was achieved. The tribal leaders announced
that they were “willing to give up the
Land on the East side of Sasquehanna from the Blue Hills or Chambers’ Mill to
where Thomas M’Gee the Indian Trader lives…”45

New treaties were conducted, and new
counties continued to be erected. On 19 August 1749, the county of York was
erected out of Lancaster from lands acquired in the treaties of 1718 and 1736.
Soon after, on 27 January 1750, the county of Cumberland was erected. The lands
from which the sixth county was created came partially from the land acquired
in the treaty of 1736, with the bulk coming from as-yet-unacquired lands to the
north and west.

During June 1754, in response to the
maneuverings of the French in the western frontier of the Province of New York
and southward into the Ohio Valley, New York governor, James DeLancey called for
a congress to be held at Albany.46 The French were constructing a
series of fortifications along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and the English
colonies needed to neutralize the threat they implied. Delegates from the
various English colonies were invited to the conference. Seven responded. In
addition to delegates from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New
Hampshire, New York and Maryland, five members of the Pennsylvania Provincial
Assembly and Supreme Executive Council attended the congress. Sachems from the
Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy were invited also, and 150 of them
attended the conference. The colonial delegates and the Iroquois sachems met in
council from 19 June to 11 July 1754. One outcome of that conference was that
the Six Nations sold another large tract of land to the Province of
Pennsylvania.47

It stretched between the summits of
the Blue and Allegheny Mountain ranges from east to west, and from Penn’s Creek
(known by the Iroquois name, Kayarondinhagh), just south of the forty-first
latitude to the southern boundary line of the province (which, until the
Mason-Dixon Line was completed in 1768, was in dispute between Pennsylvania and
Maryland). The actual tract of land was described as follows:

Beginning at the Kittochtinny or Blue Hills
on the West Bank of the Sasquehannah River, and thence by the said River to a
mile above the Mouth of a certain Creek called Kayarondinhagh; thence
North-West and by West as far as the said Province of Pennsilvania extends to
its Western Line or Boundary; thence along the said Western Line to the South
Line or Boundary of the said Province; thence by the said South Line or
Boundary to the South Side of the said Kittochtinny Hills; thence by the
South Side of the said Hills along the said Hills to the Place of Beginning.

The newly acquired territory
included a large portion of the region that would, nearly twenty years later in
1771, be erected into the county of Bedford. The present-day counties of Blair,
Huntingdon, and Fulton, which were erected out of Bedford, along with
present-day Bedford County itself, trace their genealogy directly back to this purchase
of land in the year 1754. Therefore, the year 1754 could be considered the
‘legitimate’ beginning of the Euro~American occupation of present-day Bedford
County.

About This Blog

In 2021, just seven years away, Bedford County, Pennsylvania will celebrate its 250th Anniversary. This blog has been set up to serve as a collection point for information, articles and whatever submitted by members of the 250th Anniversary Book Committee. Although established for the use of those members, anyone reading the blog, who feel they can contribute to the information they read, may do so by clicking on the 'comments' button. Our primary goal is to produce a history book that will be accurate and useful to generations to come.